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I Love ABA!

This blog is about my experiences, thoughts, and opinions on ABA. My career as an ABA provider is definitely a passion and a joy, and I love what I do.

This is a personal blog: The views and opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of the people, institutions, or organizations that I may be affiliated with.

Friday, October 19, 2012

DTT: Discrete Trial Teaching

There are MANY different
ways to apply the science of ABA, such as Natural Environment Teaching, Verbal Behavior, and DTT: Discrete Trial Teaching. Many people think DTT is all
ABA is; that all ABA therapists do is sit at a table with
flashcards and small pieces of candy. That is a common misconception, but ABA
is broad and multifaceted. Applied Behavior Analysis is a science that can be
applied in a variety of ways to teach new behaviors, and DTT is just one branch
on the ABA tree.

The 1987 Lovaas study
(which is THE research study in the field of ABA) utilized Discrete Trial Teaching in order to teach many complex skills to a group of children with Autism. Before
this study was published, it was considered a widely accepted fact that
children with Autism could not learn.
Parents of children with Autism were told to institutionalize their child and
try to move on with their lives. It cant be emphasized enough what the Loovas
study did to demonstrate that kids with Autism CAN learn when the teaching is modified.

DTT is widely used today
and probably the best known type of ABA. If your child receives ABA services at
a clinic/Autism school, or from an agency, they are probably using DTT techniques
for the sessions. It is common that lower functioning or younger children start
with a more structured and rote DTT style, and eventually over time or as the
child develops they transition to a more naturalistic learning style, such as
NET or Incidental Teaching. I LOVE DTT as a teaching methodology because it gives me the ability to remove all the frills and boil my teaching down to exactly what my learner needs to be successful.

When people make
complaints or negative statements against ABA, they usually critique ABA
for being too robotic, focusing on repetitive drills, giving kids bites of
candy all day, etc. Although distorted and inaccurate, there is some truth to
these complaints. The DTT method does focus on breaking down skills,
repetition, and reinforcement. However when done properly by qualified staff,
DTT can bring about amazing and significant gains in language, imitation,
attending, self-help, motor, and play skills in children with Autism.The research is extensive and conclusive: DTT
works.

Let’s take a closer look
at the DTT method--

Teaching Trial: For the DTT method, the following teaching
trial is used: Present materials,
give SD, prompt incorrect response or reinforce correct response, clear
materials. That entire process is called a teaching trial, and it is
repeated over and over in a therapy session. It should move at a brisk
pace, and the therapist should be collecting trial by trial data after
each trial has ended. Each trial is a learning opportunity, and the goal
of a DTT session is to give the child hundreds of learning opportunities
in order to teach specific skills. Younger children usually do 10 trials
of each skill, while older children might do 5 trials of each skill.

Breaking down tasks- DTT breaks down complex skills into small,
separate tasks to teach. So what is considered a complex skill? Well,
pretty much everything. For a child with Autism, learning to write their
name could be a 5-10 step process. For example, if the child’s name is
“Adam”, first they learn to individually trace “A”, then “d”, and so on.
After tracing, they learn to write each letter individually. Finally, the
child is given paper and pencil and told “Write your name”, as the
therapist provides letter prompting (therapist says as child writes
“A…d…a…m”). Over time the therapist would remove her assistance until the
child can independently write his name. Sound complicated? It’s really
not. The goal when using a DTT approach is to break down the skill as much
as is necessary for the child. It might not take that many steps for your
client to learn to write his name. Or, your client may need even more steps. Let the child’s
progress determine how far to break down the skill. If you have been stuck
on a particular skill for weeks, it probably needs to be broken down
further to help the child understand.

Mass Trial vs. Mixed Trials- Depending on the ability and functioning
level of the child, you would teach using “mass” or “mixed” trials. A mass
trial simply means you are asking the target multiple times in a
repetitive manner. That would look like this: “Trial 1: Touch dog…Trial
2: Touch dog…..Trial 3: Touch dog”. Mass trialing is typically used to
teach very young children, children new to ABA, or lower functioning
children. Some programs add in generalization at this step by changing the
stimuli for each trial. So the 1st trial the child touches a
photo of a brown dog, the 2nd trial the child touches a photo of
a white dog, and so on. Mixed trialing, also called random rotation, is
when you teach targets in a random order and do not use repetition. That
would look like this: “Trial 1: Touch dog…Trial 2: Give me red…Trial 3:
How old are you?”. Typically you want to transition from mass trialing to
mixed trials; although with some children they may need the repetition of
a mass trial in order to learn.

SD---> Response- The SD is simply the instruction or demand you present to the
child. Examples of SD’s include: “Touch your nose/Stand up/What number?
/Touch apples”. With DTT, the SD leads to a specific desired response. If
I say to a child “Touch your nose” there is a specific response I want the
child to do. If the child does the response correctly, I provide reinforcement.
If the child doesn’t respond correctly, I provide prompting. The SD must
be consistent across time, therapists, and settings. If the morning
therapist says “Touch your nose” and the afternoon therapist is saying
“Show me your nose” that could be confusing to the child, and could slow
down learning. The SD tells the child what you want them to do, and their
correct response is how they contact reinforcement. It is the
reinforcement that increases the likelihood that the child will respond
correctly in the future.

Reinforcement- Reinforcement is a critical part of any ABA
program, but particularly so with DTT. This is because DTT has so many
learning opportunities in a session. Depending on the schedule of
reinforcement being given, the child may be reinforced hundreds of time in
a therapy session. With a continuous or dense reinforcement schedule,
every correct answer contacts reinforcement. With an intermittent or thin
reinforcement schedule, only some correct answers contact reinforcement.
The schedule of reinforcement you use will depend on the child.
Reinforcement must be easily accessible and ready (a bag of unopened chips
is a poor choice. The chips should be opened and placed into a bowl or on
a plate for easy access), yet out of reach of the child. Reinforcement
should be varied, rotated often, and given in small amounts. If the
reinforcer is tickles, then don’t tickle the child for 5 minutes after one
correct answer. Tickle the child for maybe 4 seconds, and then continue
teaching. Many people ask me if DTT sessions have to use food treats. The
answer is no, they do not. The reason why so many DTT sessions use food
reinforcers is because very young children or children new to ABA often
don’t find social interaction, adult attention, or toys/games reinforcing.
For those children, the therapists have to use things like candy, chips,
or ice cream because that’s all the child likes. However the goal is always
to transition the child away from food treats as soon as possible.

Data Collection- Data collection for a DTT trial is done after
each trial. As the child is contacting their reinforcement, the therapist
is writing down how the child performed at the task. The type of data
sheet used can range from very simple to complex. It can be checkmarks, a
plus/minus system, graphing, etc. The method of data collection isn’t as
important as making sure data is collected. It will be difficult to
impossible to determine progress and make programming decisions without
solid, accurate data. If you don’t like data collection or want to avoid
taking so much data, I’d suggest collecting first trial data or doing a weekly Cold Probe.

Generalization- DTT gets a pretty bad rap when it comes to
generalization. Many people think that DTT is the most robotic and boring
type of ABA out there, and that it teaches skills in a vacuum (the child
can answer “pig” when asked “What says oink-oink?”, but says nothing when
asked “What does a pig say?”). I have stated this before on my blog, and
I’ll say it again: Poor quality ABA providers perform poor
quality therapy. The only reason why DTT would be lacking a plan for
generalization is if the DTT program was being done improperly.I already mentioned one
way that DTT can plan for generalization (vary the materials). Another
method is something called “Maintenance”. This is when known skills are
reviewed days, weeks, or even months after the child was taught the skill.
So if my client learned to say her phone number last week, I will ask the
skill again next month. The purpose of maintenance is to make sure the
child retained the skill, which can be an issue for children with Autism. Failing to incorporate generalization techniques into a DTT
program will only lead to problems in the long run.

**Quick Tip: For more
information about Discrete Trial Teaching, check out the information below: